The present invention relates to a disk cartridge for encasing a recording medium such as an optical disk or a magnetic disk.
In general, a magnetic disk or an optical disk is encased in a cassette case made of two shell halves. A hole into which a spindle for rotating the disk is to be inserted is formed in the center portion of the cassette case. Adjacent to the spindle hole, a head insertion hole into which a writing/reading head is to be inserted is formed in the radial direction to traverse the recording surface of the disk. The head insertion hole is opened and closed by a shutter slidingly provided on the cassette case.
The front end of the cassette case has a guide portion along which is reciprocatingly moved a slider to hold the shutter for opening and closing the head insertion hole and the spindle insertion hole. The slider is in a rectangular bar-shape and holds the bent portion of the shutter. The shutter has a pair of side plate portions extending parallel to each other from the opposite sides of the bent portion thereof in order to open and close the above two holes of the cassette case.
There is provided a twist coil spring between the front portion of the slider and the cassette case for urging the shutter in the direction where the two holes are closed.
As mentioned above, the opposite ends of the twist coil spring are held at the front end of the slider and at the front corner of the cassette case, respectively. However, if the disk cartridge is subjected to an impact force, e.g., when it is dropped on a floor, the twist coil spring may be disconnected from the front end of the slider and the corner of the cassette case. Further, an operation for connecting the coil spring to the slider and the cassette case is troublesome, and dust may enter the cassette case when the case is dropped to move the shutter to open the two holes of the cassette case.
A reading/writing device (player) for receiving the disk cartridge has a pair of drive pins for opening and closing the shutter, and, however, neither a relational movement between the drive pins and the shutter nor a charging movement of the disk cartridge into the reading/writing device is smooth.
The disk is held, at its center portion, by the spindle in a floating condition in the cassette case, and, however, the disk cannot be held stably therein. Moreover, when the disk is rotationally held, the information recording surface of the disk sometimes abuts against the inner surface of the case to cause a scratch and a damage thereonto. When the disk happens to strongly abut against the edge of the head insertion hole, the information recording surface of the disk may suffer a damage. When the peripheral edge of the disk in the case strikes -against the corner of a substantially circular surrounding wall, the peripheral edge thereof may suffer a damage.
In addition, there is provided a writing protection mechanism in the case for preventing old information having been already recorded on the disk from being erased by recording new information onto the disk. However, there may occur a case that some parts of the writing protection mechanism are assembled upside down in the case.